Given that homeowners owe an estimated $700 billion more on their homes than they’re worth, much more will be needed to strike a serious blow at the foreclosure crisis, housing experts say. They also warn that the historic deal will have a limited impact on the housing market. Prices are still falling in much of the U.S. despite a 33% drop since late 2006.

Thousands of others in danger of foreclosure would be eligible to have their mortgage debt reduced, under the deal announced Thursday. Others whose homes are worth less than their mortgage would be allowed to refinance at lower rates.

Short sales are complicated because the final price must be approved by the both the home seller and the seller's lender. So short sales require extra time to move from an offer to a settlement -- sometimes as long as six to nine months.

"In general, first-time homebuyers should definitely consider short sales because they offer a terrific opportunity to get a great house at a discounted price,"

At the same time, the Los Angeles-based builder said net orders increased 38 percent in the fourth quarter from the same three months last year.

Policy makers are pushing programs aimed at reviving the U.S. housing market. The Obama administration this month started a new version of the federal Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, after the original plan helped less than a quarter of the people targeted to lock in lower mortgage rates.

Federal Reserve officials reiterated at a meeting this month that they will keep their benchmark interest rate near zero until at least mid-2013. The central bank in September decided to reinvest maturing housing debt into new mortgage-backed securities instead of Treasuries.

"There are cards that are invitation-only," Beverly Harzog, an expert with Credit.com, tells MainStreet.

The most widely known of these elusive credit cards is the American Express Centurion or Black Card. AmEx refrains from formally disclosing the terms and conditions of the card; the only thing that a curious visitor can learn from perusing the issuer's website is that the Centurion is "rarely seen, always recognized."

But how do banks, from which he has taken no loan earlier, know that Gupta had a poor repayment record. There are big brothers in the form of credit bureaus that keep a tab on the credit behaviour of people.

What does a credit bureau do? It receives and shares information on the borrowing and repaying behaviour of people with all lending institutions like banks, non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), housing finance companies and credit card companies.

CCCS points to data which shows that the average unsecured debt of its clients in the income group earning up to £13,500 a year is £12,870.

Miami-Dade is second among Florida’s 67 counties, with 1,027 applications. Orange County is third (957), followed by Palm Beach County (939). Florida Housing Finance Corp., the agency administering the Hardest Hit Fund, has received 9,439 applications since the program launched April 18.

But most of the visitors to the open house were curious neighbors, not would-be buyers.

Middle-income Americans in Middle America are not yet ready to get back into the market. Homes that do sell in the Kansas City area are often going for between 20 percent to 30 percent below the listed price.

"There are so many people questioning things right now, asking themselves, am I going to have my job in six months?" DeVore said, affable but seemingly resigned to a slow Spring. "The indicators are very mixed for the whole economy and the real estate market very closely follows the overall economy."

After years in an apartment building, "we were just tired of sharing space with other people," says Cari Hodgson, 32. "It was time to have space of our own."

She and her commodities trader husband sold the condo and recently bought a $1.2 million, five-bedroom home in Chicago's north side, sealing the deal with the kind of big down-payment that is heating up the high-end of the U.S. property market.